Birmingham has won the race to be chosen as the UK’s candidate city for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

Birmingham has been chosen over Liverpool for England’s bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games, with an “exciting and inspirational” bid it hopes will seal its title as the UK’s second city.

The West Midlands hub impressed judges with its promise to show off British business alongside the Games, which will take place three years after Brexit.

The city, which promises to create Britain’s biggest permanent athletics stadium, must now convince the government it can prepare for 5,000 athletes and hundreds of thousands of visitors in record time.

“While both bids were of high quality, Birmingham’s bid was considered particularly strong on its management of risk, its high quality existing venue infrastructure and its plans for a long-term sporting legacy,” said the sports minister, Tracey Crouch.

The government is expected to decide in November whether to make a formal bid to host the Games and whether it would represent value for money for taxpayers. If it goes ahead with the bid, Birmingham is expected to face competition from Kuala Lumpur as well as cities in Australia and Canada.

The event became unexpectedly available in March, when the Commonwealth Games stripped the South African city of Durban of the right to stage the Games for financial reasons. In effect two years of preparation time have been wasted and there has had to be an abridged bidding contest for a late replacement.

Birmingham based its application around the 25,000-capacity Alexander stadium, currently the home of UK Athletics, which it plans to refurbish to 40,000 seats for the 2022 event and make it the UK’s largest permanent athletics stadium.

The city’s existing four indoor arenas were also central to its bid, with judges deeming Birmingham “less of a risk” than Liverpool, which wanted to build a brand new stadium near its Unesco-listed waterfront.

Paul Blanchard, the chief executive of Commonwealth Games England, said: “It was an exciting and inspirational bid and we felt, ultimately because we’ve got to win an international competition if this goes forward, it was the one best suited to winning that competition.”

Blanchard said Birmingham had capitalised on the Brexit factor, with government ministers likely to see the Commonwealth Games as an opportunity to show Britain had not turned its back on the world after leaving the European Union. The city planned to run a business convention alongside the Commonwealth Games, Blanchard said.

He added: “There is no question that the Commonwealth Games represents the biggest noise in terms of Commonwealth engagement. Part of Birmingham’s bid, which was really important, was that this would be an outward-facing bid not just for the rest of the UK but for the Commonwealth as well.”

Having lost out years ago on bids to host the national football stadium and Millennium Dome, the announcement was unsurprisingly greeted with delight in Birmingham. Andy Street, the recently-elected West Midlands mayor, said: “This is brilliant news for Birmingham and the West Midlands.

“We’ve never had a multi-sport competition like this in Birmingham and the West Midlands, so this is genuinely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us.”

Blanchard said hosting the Commonwealth Games could transform Birmingham in the same way it was credited with benefiting Manchester when it hosted the event in 2002. Glasgow’s hosting of the event in 2014 is estimated to have brought £740m in investment and business to the city and UK in the three years since.

Ian Ward, deputy council leader and chair of Birmingham’s Commonwealth Games bid committee, said: “This is a great endorsement by the UK government of Birmingham’s credentials to host the Games and recognition of the city’s resolve to deliver a memorable event.

“We appreciate that it was a very close decision and that Liverpool pushed us all the way with a very compelling proposal. This is not the end of the journey and we look forward to working with the government as it makes its final decision to support a UK candidate city.”